These Jackets Are Fire

Trending for spring: a jacket inspired by firemen.

Many fashion trends are a matter of inches. This one is a matter of cinches.

The fireman jacket, a variation on the three- or four-pocket chore coat that features weighty metal clasps in place of buttons, has emerged as a curious, clangy spring jacket trend.

Adrien Brody, pre-Oscar win, wore a fireman jacket in British GQ. Supreme, the streetwear agenda-setters, offers one in glossy cowhide for close to $1,000. Instagram-marketed brands like Ronning in Britain target early adopters with waist-length clasp jackets for about third of that price. Vintage dealers, reporting increased interest, offer them for even less.

When worn, fireman jackets are part fidget toy, part ASMR doodad. Those metal clasps lock together with a pleasing click, like a seatbelt on a roller coaster. As the owner of a vintage version from the nearly forgotten Italian label Energie (purchased for around $175 at 194 Local, a New York vintage shop), I can tell you that those closures are pleasing to idly toggle as you, say, contemplate how to write a spring jacket story.

(As is perhaps obvious, it’s those shiny clasps that lend the coat its name. Authentic firefighter’s jackets feature metal clips that are easier to fasten than buttons or zippers while wearing gloves.)

Still, fireman coats have been around well before the term ASMR was in use. A 1979 article in the St. Joseph Gazette in Missouri includes a photo of a man in a $150 metal-clasped “fireman’s jacket” from the defunct men’s label Hunter Haig. “Firemen take risks,” the accompanying article read. “That’s why they need a coat that can take the roughest treatment in the worst weather.”